Chapter 62: The Memory of Maids

Mistress Alice’s words hung in the close Plymouth air like the smoke from a guttering candle. Edmund stood very still, the ache in his shoulder—where the Falcon’s blade had grazed him a lifetime ago—throbbing in sympathy with his thoughts. The name Blanche was unfamiliar, yet it settled into his mind with the weight of a key turning in a lock.

“Blanche,” he repeated, tasting the name. “And she was maid to the Duke of Norfolk. That is a thread that leads to the old faith, to the Ridolfi Plot, to every treason these past fifteen years.”

Cecily moved to the window, her grey eyes tracing the masts of ships in the harbour below. “My mother spoke of her only once, and then as if the name burned her tongue. She said Blanche was the quietest woman she ever knew—and the most dangerous, precisely because no one ever thought to watch her.”

“Twenty years of patience,” Edmund murmured. “That is not the devotion of a servant. That is the discipline of a zealot.” He turned back to Mistress Alice. “Where is she now? What name does she bear in the Queen’s household?”

The old widow’s hands, gnarled as winter oak, folded over her lap. “I cannot say. The court has churned like the sea since Norfolk’s fall. She may be a laundress, a lady-in-waiting, a keeper of the Queen’s jewels. But I know this: she would not take a position where she could not see and be unseen.”

“Sleeps beside the Queen,” Edmund said slowly. “The Falcon’s ledger used that phrase. I thought it meant a lover, a counsellor, someone of rank. But perhaps it is simpler—a woman who shares the Queen’s bedchamber. A woman who helps her dress, who brushes her hair, who hears her murmur secrets in the night.”

Cecily’s jaw tightened. “A maid of the bedchamber. There are perhaps a dozen such women. They are the Queen’s shadows, present at every audience, every private council, every moment of weakness. If one of them is Blanche…”

“Then every secret Elizabeth has whispered since her accession has been heard by a traitor.” Edmund felt the familiar weight of dread settle upon him. “We must return to London. We must learn which of those women vanished from Norfolk’s household and reappeared at court.”

He moved toward the door, then paused. “Mistress Alice, you said Blanche has patience. But patience requires an end. What does she wait for? What does she want?”

The widow’s eyes, so like her daughter’s, met his with terrible clarity. “She wants what Norfolk wanted. What Mary Stuart wants. What every Catholic who has plotted against the Queen wants—not merely Elizabeth’s death, but the death of the Protestant succession. She wants England to kneel to Rome once more. And she believes, my lord, that she has been chosen by God to make it so.”

Edmund felt the cold creep along his spine. “Then she will not stop. Not for the Armada, not for Walsingham, not for anything short of her goal.”

“No,” Mistress Alice agreed. “She will not stop. And she will not miss.”

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The ride to London was a blur of rain and hoofbeats. Edmund’s body screamed for sleep, for the soft embrace of his bed at Morland, but the deadline of the twentieth of August gnawed at him like a rat at a rope. Cecily rode beside him, her hood pulled low, her silence a companion he had come to trust.

They reached the city as evening fell, the streets slick with mud and the smell of river water. Walsingham’s house on Seething Lane glowed with candlelight, a beacon of grim purpose. Edmund dismounted stiffly, his bones protesting the journey, and was admitted without ceremony.

The spymaster sat at his desk, a mountain of papers before him, his face gaunt in the flickering light. He looked up as Edmund entered, and his eyes—those eyes that had seen every treason England could devise—narrowed.

“You have news.”

“I have a name,” Edmund said, sinking into a chair without invitation. “Blanche. She was a maid in Norfolk’s household. She vanished after his fall, and now she sleeps beside the Queen. She is the Falcon’s true master, or his partner, or his guide. She is the one who has been feeding Spain our secrets for twenty years.”

Walsingham’s pen stilled. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he rose and moved to a cabinet against the wall, unlocking it with a key from a chain at his neck. He drew forth a leather-bound book, its pages yellowed with age.

“Norfolk’s household,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “When he was arrested, I confiscated his records. Every servant, every retainer, every soul who had passed through his gates. I have kept them, hoping they might one day yield a name.” He opened the book, running a finger down a page. “Blanche. There are three Blanches listed. A laundress, a cook, and a maid of the bedchamber who accompanied Norfolk’s wife to mass.”

Edmund leaned forward. “The maid of the bedchamber. What is her full name?”

Walsingham’s finger stopped. “Blanche Arundel. She was young then, barely twenty. But there is a note here—she was recommended to Norfolk by the Countess of Shrewsbury, who had herself received the girl from the household of the late Cardinal Pole.”

“Cardinal Pole,” Edmund breathed. “The last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. A man who spent his life trying to return England to Rome.”

“And who trained his servants to serve that cause above all others.” Walsingham closed the book with a snap. “If Blanche Arundel is in the Queen’s bedchamber, she is not there by chance. She is there by design.”

Edmund rose, a weariness settling into his bones that had nothing to do with the road. “Then we must find which woman in the Queen’s household bears that name now. And we must do it before the twentieth of August.”

Walsingham’s gaze met his. “The Queen’s maids of the bedchamber are chosen for their loyalty and their blood. If Blanche has changed her name, she has changed it well. But there is one way to know.”

“What way?”

The spymaster’s lips curved into something that was not quite a smile. “We ask her.”